Plex Server, Transcoding with Intel Nuc - 8th en or 10th gen?

[Yassinex]

Hi guys,

I was using an old NUC (4th gen) since years, was running on it an ESXi 6.7 Hypervisor server, with many VM instances: a web server, home automation and another VM was a Plex Server on a Linux Ubuntu ( the NUC’s igpu was in Pass-through mode on the Plex vm ).

Then recently, I decided to move to (a-one-box-that-does-it-all) a QNAP TS-873. I installed an NVidia gpu (gtx 1650) hoping to get a decent Plex hw transcoding… end of the story short…it was a real crap… QNap VM management is a joke… really limited, not flexible, non persistent usb at boot …etc… but that’s off topic.

Now I’m coming back to an ol’ good NUC setup, so I’m wondering if a NUC10i7 is the way to go …or a NUC8i7 ?

Why I’m asking ?
Because :

1. 8th gen is still available in Amazon and (a little) cheaper.
2. the 8th gen NUCs have an Intel Iris Plus 655 gpu where 10th gen NUCs have an UHD 620 gpu… so clearly the newer NUC version has slower GPU performance thnt the old one ( and more expensive btw).

So my questions are :
1- Is quicksync performing the same for these 2 gens igpu ( they share the same qucksync version v6 ). aka does the gpu performance impact quicksync performance ?
2- Is the i7 version more noisy than the i5 version (regardless of the gen) ? is there any interest to go for an i7 over i5 for plex ?

Any experience here to share ?

Many thanks for your feedback folks !!!

[ChuckPa]

I have a NUC8i7-HVK and never happier. It is far more than I will need for this house. It will do all 6 devices which need transcoding without issue.

As I change out the TVs to no longer need transcoding, the demand will decrease.

[Yassinex]

thanks alot for your feedback @ChuckPa , but your NUC8i7-HVK is another beast, it has a Radeon RX VEGA M GH, not sure that NUC8i7BEH2 ( the non skull one) is as fast as yours… they have different cpus and gpus